Urban Design
Gateway to Long Island City
The Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project of Queens Plaza is intended to create a gateway to Long Island City.
Suburbs 2.0
A review of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, from Residential Architect Online.
Observe, Transform, Model, Interpret
These are just a few of the ways Prof. Peter Bosselman of UC Berkeley analyzes the built environment in his latest book, Urban Transformation: Understanding City Design and Form. Julia Galef brings us this review.
Quirky Bus Stops Across the World
This slide show includes pictures of unorthodox bus stops all over the world, including Yellowstone National Park, Estonia, Japan and Brazil.
The Evolving Field of Urban Design
Metropolis talks with William Saunders, editor of Harvard Design Magazine, about his new book covering the evolving field of urban design.
Drawing Blanks: Urban Design and the Power of the Pen
With just two weeks to go in my second semester, I like to think that I know just about everything about being a planning student by now. But when 100+ prospective students came to our campus open house last week, an easy question stumped me: “What about drawing?” At first I thought she was asking if she needed to have an art background coming into school. A thousand times, no. But instead she was looking to learn how to draw as a planner, which is a much trickier proposition.
When The Planners Go Marching In
There’s just one problem with academia. Sometimes it can be so … academic. In the interest of getting out into the world, I’m writing this post from Nawlins (nee New Orleans), where 16 other Penn planners and I are spending our weeklong spring break doffing our tops for beads and booze doing pro bono city planning work. For most of us, it’s been nothing short of a paradigm shift—and the week ain’t over yet.
Three Things the Mayor Can Do to Fix L.A.
Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne offers three pieces of advice to recently re-elected L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for improving his city -- and his urban planning credibility.
“Who Am I?” And Other Very Practical Questions
From the first day of the semester, I could tell my Urban Design Methods course was going to be different from the others I've taken in planning school so far. “Call me at home. I’m up till midnight,” the professor told us. I’m not up till midnight. He asks us questions like, “What is your design identity?” “What three adjectives describe you as a designer?” “Who are you?” It makes grad school feel kind of like therapy. Really, really expensive therapy.
Achieving Burnham's Green Vision for Chicago
Recognizing that urban greenery is crucial city dwellers' health and well-being, experts in Chicago spent the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham's "Plan of Chicago" by discussing ways to attain its vision.
Anybody For Some Duck Duck Goose?: Planning School, Semester Two Begins
On Friday, in the first week of my second semester of planning graduate school, we did the hokey-pokey. We put our right foot in, put our right foot out, put our right foot in, and then we shook it all about. We turned ourselves around. That was what it was all about. The demonstration was all about pointing out common ground and how people were rooted in order to approach problem solving and conflict resolution. It sounds a little squishy, I know. But it got the point across, and more important, it introduced the dance to one international student who had never heard of the hokey-pokey.
Friday Funny: Rats Prefer Manhattan
Rats choose Manhattan because if its logical street grid, according to new research by a team of zoologists and geographers at Tel Aviv University, who are using rats to test wayfinding in cities.
Cities and Cognitive Burnout
Compared to natural settings, busy urban environments can be detrimental to cognitive functioning and self-control. Well-designed, biodiverse parks are integral to counterbalancing the concrete jungle.
Urban Design Studio To Transform Glendale
Glendale, California, has recently established an Urban Design Studio within its planning department to help developers create more appropriate, aesthetically appealing projects.
Urban Design After The Age of Depression
Hey, have you heard we’re all screwed? Last week Penn hosted the “Reimagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil” conference. If you were there, or if you read the liveblog of the event, you saw speaker after speaker tell of the doom and gloom facing the planet. Climate change! Carbon emissions! Decaying infrastructure! Nine billion people! In the words of the classical philosopher Shawn Carter, we got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one. Frankly, it’s all a little depressing.
To Re-Imagine Cities, Re-Imagine Urban Design
Oil is running out and the climate is changing. How this impacts cities will largely be determined by how the urban design field reacts.
Road Closures, Pedestrianization Key to Successful Urbanization
Chris Turner looks at successful car-free pedestrianization and bicycle planning in Copenhagen and Melbourne and wonders why Canada's sprawling, frigid cities can't adopt these ideas as well.
Cambodian Cool
The Cambodian city of Siem Reap is a hotbed of tourist activity -- and of tacky hotels. Many say this sprawl of hotels is a major problem in the city, but new designs are making the city a cooler place to visit and live.
Master's Planning: How to Pick an Industry That’s Growing, Not Shrinking
Just after 2008 began, I realized my profession of choice was dying. I’d spent the previous seven years at Philadelphia Weekly, a fairly typical alternative newspaper: you know, magazine-style lefty bent, where-to-go-and-what-to-do listings, porn ads in the back. The usual.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
Ada County Highway District
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
